Hand of God

Hey Patrick, gorgeous shot and congrats on Photo of the Week! Your images are outstanding and this one is no exception.

Well - I'm not as whelmed as some by this.

The presentation, with the heavy black border is a detraction to begin with, but that is a nit.

The photo itself -- there's lots of contrast (luminosity X chroma = MEGA!). This certainly makes it demand initial attention, but once having attracted the attention, then what? What is the contrast used for?

As a landscape scene, it does not appear to have a center of interest - the contrast is sort of all over random preventing the eye from resting any place, or even being guided in any direction.

As an abstract of shapes or lines, I don't see any particularly intriguing features - but then abstract intrigue is nebulous and hard to define anyway.

Am I being obtuse? Is a colourful, contrasty picture good just because it's colourful and contrasty?

 

Patrick, I don't mean to be offensive to you or your photo, but one of the hazards of having your picture selected as POW on photonet is it being open to comments from us rabble :-)

it is very good symbolic shot, great composition, colours aren't most important in photograph like this, Congrats Patrick

Patrick has many outstanding images in his folders. However, I would not consider this as anywhere close to one of his better ones. It's an okay shot as the ratings on this would verify. While the lighting on the subject is rather nice, what else about this really stands out? There is an imbalance to this image created by the reflection of the branch. There needs to be more of that reflection to really make the composition on this one work. Also, the ripples (as mentioned above) do not help this either. There are also buildings visible in the background, as well as an almost blurred appearance in the middle of the image due to the less than calm waters, which I am sure would have been preferred by Patrick.

 

 

 

So what does this leave us with then; nice lighting, and that's really about it. Go to his folders for some really excellent images. This -in my opinion- is just not one of them.

colorful and relaxing vision here... interesting too when seen upside down.

we can also imagine a couple of different crop on the lower side (a small one excluding the distracting wood reflection on the right corner or a larger one simply totally eliminating the tree reflection).

Surely represents the actual standard on photo.net: nicely saturated and contrasty pictures with little content that for some reason everyone gets excited about. But still quite a nice landscape, congratulations for being POTW!

 

Simone

This photo is very well composed. It's very well explicative of the of the idea showed on the title. In my opinion is an example of a good photo with simple elements.

 

Domenico

This is beautifully done. There is nothing else that I can say. Congratulations on having it named Photo of the Week.

 

Your website is astonishly good as well.

 

--Lannie

Beautifully done, the yellow-orange branches complement perfectly with the bluish sky and lake.

 

Nicely lite landscape, looking at your folder, there are many that I liked and are very beautiful. congratulations!. Pnina

I think it's a beautiful image. Looks a little soft but perhaps that's due to JPEG compression though I've seen very sharp images on this site--maybe that can be improved assuming it is a sharp image. I'm puzzled by the comments about its creativity as I do not find a branch over water exactly creative or unique. Not too keen on the title either, but that's me. As I said, its a beautiful image though. Wish I'd taken it.

The lighting in the top 2/3s of the image is great, but the water and reflections are just

muddy. I think cropping most of the water and reflection out creates a much stronger image.

The comments about the reflection make me wonder if all the fake flaming pear reflections have made some of us forget about the variations in the brightness that we see in the real world. This looks fine. It adds a base to the composition, tonally, if not physically.

Carl, in my mind, the very small amount of reflection at the bottom makes the entire image lose its balance. There needs to be more of it or none at all. The fact that the reflection near the center is rather muddy is another problem for me entirely. This image is just not that good on its own, but when compared to some of Patrick's other work, is rather average at best.

 

IMHO...

Thank you for all your critics and comments. Honestly I personnaly almost didnt include this shot in my portfolio but decide otherwise to see people's reaction. This shot does not appear on my persoanl website. I was more than suprised to see it chosen as POW. Guess now I know what people really think about it :) Thanks again everyone for your time

Having looked at the rest of Patrick's portfolio as well as his website.. There are many of his shots I admire more both compositionally and content-wise.

 

The light is indeed beautiful here, as it is in other shots Pat has taken. But only on the tree itself. The refelection is very small and unbalancing set right at the bottom of the frame, and it is also cast in shadow, therefore lacking definition and vibrancy. Added to these problems there is a wisp of cloud streaking across the background and colliding with the twigs, and the branch itself does not lend itself to any 'special' pattern or compositional aspect except for the thicker trunk hanging nicely down in a 3rd placement.

 

It's a pleasant enough photograph, but not one I would say especially stands out, particularly in comparison to Patrick's other work. I imagine with some issues addressed this could be an outstanding shot; if the sky was less polarized and with a pattern of cloud which offered a more interesting backdrop (and therefore reflection too), without the obvious darker areas top and bottom of the frame, zooming in for more of the reflection in the composition, and capturing more detail, contrast and colour in that reflection etc

 

Congratulations on the many other photos which I prefer Patrick, you have an impressive collection of work and a wonderful eye!!

This picture really got enough room for discussion, rather than pick another one from his portfolio. I hope Patrick can post the original to see if there is a better crop. The current crop is a bit too tight.

IMO, the contrast and overly-manipulated colour pallette detract severely from the subject, making it 'eye candy'-- but not a dynamic subject.

This is an evocative, quiet photo. Contrast it to DiFruscia's gallery.

After I offered unqualified praise at first, I went on to read that Vince Tylor referred to a "muddy" effect at bottom, and Chip Cohen referred to an "overly-manipulated colour pallette." It occurred to me that these two criticisms might be related, and so I tried to reverse some of the likely manipulation, in this case by sliding the cyan-red adjustment 40 units to the left (i.e., more cyan, which is to say less red). This is what I got, and I suspect this is closer to the unmanipulated photo: rather ho-hum branches, which were enhanced by adding red, which did improve the color of the branches albeit at the cost of the brightness of the blues in the reflection at bottom.

 

Perhaps Patrick could upload the original so that we could see if the nice color of the branches did indeed come at the expense of the accuracy and vibrancy of the color of the reflected water at the bottom.

 

--Lannie

After trying the above, I decided that, since I liked the color of the branches, I would try to keep their nice color while restoring some of the color to the water at the bottom.

 

--Lannie

Gorgeous image. I would buy a poster of this image any time.

I still prefer the original image because it has that mystic darker colours about it

I agree though with the thickness of the black border it needs reducing.

this uniqe point of view open all spaces and reflections...

It's good to see your alternative approaches Lannie, but the reflection still lacks ooomph to me. The bottom half of the picture is still muddy-looking in all your proposed versions.

 

Here's my visualisation according to my above comment re definition/contrast.

And here's the visualisation for the zoom factor and composition which I suggested in my earlier comment.